The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1887-01-22
GOLD TREVOR HOUSE,"
The Mystery Of It's Last Mysteri.
GUS Occupant.

The "Oid Trevor House, as from time i'm
memorial it had been known to the people
of East Winston, was, at the period in
which the final scene of this sketch is laid
the sole architectural relic of colonial times
yet remaining of the many landmarks of
bygone age swept away in the previous
quarter of century, before the relentless
''march of improvement" Like many an
other ancient structure of its class, it had
gained mysterious reputation, partly from
the mixture of truth and fiction we call ira
dition, partly from the strange power over
the human fancy possessed by human
abode IN the decay of antiquity. The old
house, whose messy roof has sheltered
many successive generations, whose walls
have shielded the newborn babe and the
dying grandsire, through whose portals
have passed so much of Joy and sorrow,
hope and disappointment, whose very exist
.ence has been for scores of years inter
twined with human thought and human
feeling, becomes endowed with an almost
human individuality, and appeals with pre-
vailing force to the sympathies and the i'm
agination.
The Trevor house was built in the style
especially favored by the colonial magnates
vi OllC Gu anu ulll years ago. IL was
an overgrown building all under one vast
double roof, with an immense stone chimney
protruding from the center of it's peak, and
u row of three dormer windows projecting
from its side, in front. The rooms were
spacious, but low and the great beams
showing themselves overhead, and in every
angle, told of the days when trees were yet
large, and timber plentiful
No small part of the interior of the house
was occupied by the great chimney stack,
and the cavern-lilze freplaces confirmed the
story of the beams. What sight it must
have been when one of these now black and
repulsive hearths was piled high with
sizzling beech logs, sending up to the stars
their clouds of vaporous smoke and crack
ling sparks; while lights and shadows
danced upon the walls in unison with the
Pickering fames-a fire worthy of the hall
of a Norman Baron. But now the fires
that burned in the ancient fire
places were those occasionally kindled
by some wretched vagrant who tried to
consider himself protected by rotting cham
Der floors, and by rafters from which the
shingles were dropping, like decaying leaves
from wind shaken tree top.
For many years the old house had been
used as tenement house, and had been Oc-
cupied by that form of poverty just above
the degree of pauperism. But it was re
marked that want and a nominal rent We're
not able to induce even its most pitiable ten
ant to remain long beneath its roof. Strange
tales were told of the mysterious sounds
heard in its empty rooms; but whether the
gnawing of rats, and the wind whistling
through lnOthOles. connected with the we'll
known legends concerning the place-the
effect of all being heightened by the active
imaginations of the superstitious dwellers
in this myth inspiring ruin-had any thing
to do in creating these stories, the intelli-
gent part of the community did not seem to
regard it worth investigating Still, the Old
Trevor House had come to be looked upon
by every one as being, in some strange
sense, different from all the other houses :;
though, perhaps, very few would have been
willing to confess, openly that they them
selves shared in the general belief.
But now, for some time, the old mansion
having fallen into state of irreparable
ruin, had been superseded by the aims
house as the last resort of honest poverty,
and its hospitality was extended only to the
transient guest, to whom it was matter of
Indifference whether he We're sheltered by
a roof or the sky.
Two hundred years ago, the Trevor family
held the chief place among the arstocracy
of East Winston, or Winston, as it was then
called. The founder of the family had come
from England as one of the pioneers of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, and, stern Pur-
itan as he was, and forsaking his native
land to brave the hardships of wilder
ness for conscence's sake, as he did, he
never forgot that his was a branch of one
of the most ancient families of England,
nor the Difference that in his belief, this
fact made only his Just due from those
lower in the social scale than himself.
This characteristic lost none of its force in
its transmission to his immediate posterity ::
and the second and third generations of
'TrevOrs possessed all the overbearing ar
rogance of their ancestor, not always
tempered by his real desire to act justly
and wisely towards all men.
We are disposed to look back to those
early times as upon an age of primitive and
democratic simplicity when men were not
only equal, but this equality was fully recog-
ni2ed by each man in his neighbour; but
shere is reason to believe that social dis
+inctions existed, with degree of assump-
tion on one side, and of concession on the
other, almost unknown in this country at
the present day. And, perhaps, of all the
family of the Trevors who lived before or
since the days OF the Puritan cmigrant, the
most arrogant was John Trevor, the builder
of the house we have described, who began
the work soon after the beginning of the
last century.
Naughty and severe in the extreme in his
bearing toward others, an unreasonable
tyrant wherever lac could exercise his